


Rocks and Romance

by lafemmedefandomwrites



Category: Trollhunters (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Romance, Romcom Silliness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 21:41:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10930587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lafemmedefandomwrites/pseuds/lafemmedefandomwrites
Summary: or "Barbara is the Only Legal Adult Human Here" A collection of one-shots, silly, romantic, and sometimes sad, all about our favorite couples.





	1. Stricklake Puffcakes Pt. 1

Horns do not mix with pillows.

Walter learned this early-on. When he was young and growing into himself he once had half a mind to try and walk about in his trollish skin. The other half woke up with a crick from sleeping with his chin against his chest, his poor pillow double-impaled like a pasty on a fork.

He sleeps in his human form…until the air conditioning goes kaput.

Even with every window thrown open for invitation, the summer breezes snub the second house at the end of the street. Jim’s smoothies during the day only last so long, and the refrigerator makes sounds that warn of mutiny should the torture of overwork continue.

Their bed ( _theirs_ , that they share, together, with mutual enthusiasm) is a linen swamp. Walter lies flat on his back, arms behind his pillow, legs spread as far as possible without intruding on Barbara’s attempt at a similarly pancake-ish pose. They breathe. They do not touch. The intruding fly by the sill dares not even buzz lest the effort make the space hotter.

“That’s it.”

“Hm?”

“Change. Right now. Into your troll form.”

Walter turns and lifts an eyebrow she doesn’t need to see to know he’s doing it in the dark.

“Beg pardon?”

There is the wettish rustle of damp sheets. Barbara’s plaintive voice comes from above him.

“Your stone skin is always so cool. Roll over and c'mere so I can cuddle my husband.”

The pillow sighs as he pulls his arms down and places his hands on his stomach. Barbara also doesn’t need to see to know the exact curve of his mouth as his brows knit and he sets an affable smile next to a tentative frown.

“But…Darling,” (he’ll bat his dark lashes and his green eyes will look distractingly soft and charming), “I’m  _stone_. Don’t you think that would be rather less than comfortable?” (She’ll catch the back of the question, the implication of discomfort farther-reaching, and her heart will hurt while she lets him keep his strength to lean on.)

But the bed creaks, and  _now_  Walter is surrounded. A warm hand strokes his temple. Citrus wafts into his nose and soft hair tickles his cheek.

“You’re always comfortable,” whispers his wife, low and beguiling against his neck. “And you happen to have a cold setting so I don’t have to pretend you have the plague when it’s hot.“

She feels the tug of his cheeks and the tremble of his throat as he chuckles.

“I’ll have you know, dear wife,” he rolls onto his side, the room flashes green and his next words become a delicious growl she can feel in her chest, “that I never once caught the plague.”

“Mm. Good to know. Now come here,” she commands.

“Yes, darling,” he purrs, settling gently beside her, their arms snaking around each other tight as the twined halves of a knot.

_We fit,_  he thinks, sighing as her fingers trace his markings like the lines on a map.  _She knows exactly where to go._

Sleep comes easily. Queen Mab and her ladies giggle softly when they pass o'er the lovers never odder, more perfectly, sweetly matched

 


	2. Motorcycles and Mambo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> or "Date Night at the Dance Hall" a gift fic for HumanityinaHandbag on tumblr

He is loose-limbed swagger and tight-waisted sway, a swing of legs and tilt of mouth that shout “Fashion without trying!” And there’s grace, by God, so much of it; his feet turn out like he dances for his money. “And he _could,”_ his shoulders set back, and his neck standing long cry with pride. He wears an old leather jacket and jeans that ought to be too young, yet embrace his seniority and make it twist its outlines every right way.  
Walter strolls up the drive from the bike parked on the street while Barbara hides behind the coat tree.

_“Woah…_ I–I can’t–I don’t think I can do this?”

Jim, entrenched behind the kitchen counter, armed with a bread knife and the excuse of his own dinner to make, does his best to be encouraging while resisting the urge to flee out the back door.

“You’ll be _fine,_ mom. It’s just Mr. Strickler,” he says, shocked at the words as he hears himself say them.

_Not helpful at all,_ replies something inside her that sounds as young and afraid as she feels. She peeks through the window again. He’s paused on the sidewalk digging in his pockets for something. Barbara bolts to the kitchen to the long mirror hung sideways on the wall. Her hair is stiff as the hairspray could get it, yet stubborn pieces stray from their lines and curl petulantly around her ears and forehead. She squints at her foundation in the low, late-afternoon light and cannot tell if the patch on her chin is just slightly lighter or darker than the sticky substance around it.

“Oh, I look _terrible!”_ she groans, throwing her hands up to (but not touching!) her face. “I can’t do this. We’re just going to have to call it off. We can go out another night! We could do that, right?”

Jim has put down the bread knife and holds one fresh slice of Italian in each hand, putting them together and pulling them apart again as he blinks at his mother wondering how in the world he should be expected to know such a thing.

“You look great, mom! Everything will be great, just–you know, just _breathe.”_

He takes one long breath in and exhales it through his nose, smiling, amazed at his own presence of mind. _Breathing always works, right?_ He chuckles when his mother copies him and answers with her own smile. They smile together. Jim puts the slices down on his plate. Barbara pulls her hands down and wrings them in front of the belt loops of her faded dress jeans.

“Thanks, sweetheart. I just have to–keep calm and–”

The knock at the door sounds in the empty front rooms.

“Jiminy!” She jumps and throws her hands up against her gluey ‘do. Barbara grimaces, flapping her hands at her hair as she realizes what she’s done. “Oh, _no._ Oh, _no!”_

* * *

  _"A date!” crowed Nomura._

_**“Dinner,”** corrected Walt._

_“An evening out with dinner,” said Blinky, and lifting one stony brow, “romantically.”_

_Walter glared. They grinned together as though they had accomplished something._ _“I’ve no idea why you seem so pleased with yourselves. This evening was neither of your doing, and will merely serve to maintain our cover with Jim.”_

_Infuriatingly, their grins widened. Nomura didn’t bother to hide her snicker._

_“Simply necessary,” she said._

_“A measured sacrifice,” added Blinky, nodding._

_They looked at one another and guffawed._

_“You are insufferable,” huffed Walt as he turned on his heel and stamped from the library._

_“Have fun on your date!” called Nomura, and he rolled his eyes and permitted himself a small growl, trying to ignore how difficult it had suddenly become to swallow._

 By Deya’s grace, Walt still remembers how to operate a motorbike. It isn’t his, additional Praise Be, else there would be nothing to keep him from driving it into a tree in his distraction. (The collateral to borrow it from another Janus changeling in town had been steep, on account of his propensity for destroying any but the most fortified motor vehicles.)

The white, slat house was lighted but quiet as he drove up and cut the engine. When a sudden surge of paranoia has him rummaging in his pockets to be sure, for the 13th time, that he had remembered his wallet, he heard a commotion and the cry of a familiar, feminine voice.

He’d fairly run to the front door.

Now, the house is quiet again. He checks his watch; he is only a little past his time, and he knocks.

There comes another cry from inside, then the advance of heels rises against the door. It opens suddenly, making Walt jump back a step.

And freeze.

She’s a silk-gloved punch in a polka dot sweater, a lipstick kiss in red rouge and spicy perfume. Her hair’s in a faux-fifties updo, artfully uncurling around her face. Willow-slim in a pair of jeans that ought to be illegal, she hangs around the door like the curving work of a calligraphy pen. But her eyes remind him about that punch, and add a bite to the tune of “Mack the Knife;” they draw him and drown him, too big and blue to be real.

They stare at each other.

“Hi,” says Barbara.

“Hello,” says Walt.

“You look…”

She slides up and down him and smiles.

He feels like he’s been kicked in the chest.

“Oh, well… You, _definitely…_ Er, that is, you, too…”

She giggles. Honest-to-girlishness, and now his cheeks feel inexplicably warm.

“I was… I was a little worried about…” she begins to say, frowning.

His hands go cold.

“Yes?”

“I, um… I don’t remember?”

Her smile turns back on and brings his with it.

“Well, then…” a lightness picks up his feet and makes them step forward. He clicks his heels and bows to her without thinking about it. “Shall we go?” he asks, offering his hand.

She seems to fall into it like she’s letting go of something else.

“Let’s.”

“Have her home before midnight!” Jim’s voice carries from the kitchen. Walt salutes and pulls the door shut as Barbara slides comfortably under his arm.

* * *

  _“A date,”_ whispers a pink spy to a blue one as they huddle in the bushes. She nudges his arm. “Get pictures! For evidence!”

The blue spy chuckles, and clicks an old-fashioned camera. “They’re going to have so much fun!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I MIGHT continue this, but it would need to generate some interest. Of course, critique and kudo if you'd like to read more of this particular idea!


	3. Stricklake Puffcakes Pt. 2: In Writing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More of an angsty one. Allusions to the darker chapters of Walt's history.

Walt keeps journals.

It began when English dripped as ink onto a page and gained a mouth in young Walder's mind. He wrote for practice, then for pleasure, then to bleed his humors into an order the barbers failed to achieve. Words gurgled out of his head like sick, and afterwards, just like his first misadventures with too much wine, made him feel better. For a while.

He finishes the first slim volume in a few months. In a year, he has filled another. More human languages gain speech through letters in his head. ( _“Latin! Greek! Marry, Walder would be a scholar!”_ say his friends, to which Blinky and Dictatious puff proudly and say nothing–except hand him more primers.)

Centuries pass. He writes a library, kept by Dictatious, then Blinky, stashed safely in Trollmarket, found by Barbara during one long night of troll studies. She stretches her legs, stepping to one of the high stacks, and touches the name in familiar Roman capitals.

“Are these yours?”

Walter rolls his head round on his shoulder, heavy eyes snapping open when he sees what she’s holding.

 _“Ahah,_ I see you’ve found my journals,” he says, rising quickly, grinning with just too many teeth as he gingerly takes the book from Barbara and pretends to leaf through it. “I haven’t seen these in ages,” he lies.

She catches on, and lets go (keeping enough to remember), slowly tracing the gilded letters on the spine of another volume. “How many are there?”

He puts back the one she took. “Too many, ironically, to remember.”

“Do you write them all in Troll?” she asks. (Those parts she’d glimpsed were all sloppy, slanted, and pressed hard into the page, like the letters had fallen from a height and broke where they lay; the journal she’d picked was almost completely in Troll.)

“Not all.” He selects a book from a higher shelf, brightening as he flips through its pages. “This one is from my travels. See here,” he tilts it her way and points to a passage, “I spent some time touring Italy—before it was Italy,” he chuckles through his nose.

Barbara traces after his fingers, taps a word. “You were in Verona?”

“Fair Verona, yes! And Milan, then Venice, then Florence and Rome. The Renaissance was blooming, you see—even Gunmar took interest, though much less, I think, in the arts, than the arms. Ah!”

Walter lifts both pointer fingers and scrambles across the room to a high cabinet. Inside are tall, skinny sleeves of loose papers, some gilded, some wrapped in cloth, some held together by straining ribbons. He hums, trailing a finger over the many-colored spines, then slides one out and fairly hops back to their table.

“Grant, I was—am not—an artist, but on a few occasions I made the acquaintance of apprentices from certain workshops, who, when plied with enough vintage and company, were happy to share their masters' secrets!”

He opens the wide cover and page upon page of sketches, and diagrams, and scribbled, wine-stained notes flutter out of the sleeve. Some are signed, in tiny letters, in Troll.

 _“Oh,”_ sighs Barbara, ghosting her hand across the old parchment. “Walt, these are _amazing.”_

His eyes twinkle as he lifts one up, a [sketch of a horse and rider](http://culturalinstitute.britishmuseum.org/asset-viewer/military-machines/4AF1vuuEl2xiew?hl=en) with a wicked, bladed device attached to the saddle.

“Milan, 1485.”

“Da Vinci?”

He nods, and raises another,[ an architectural draft.](http://culturalinstitute.britishmuseum.org/asset-viewer/michelangelo-elevation-of-the-lower-storey-of-the-julius-tomb-and-pieces-of-the-lower-storey-of-the-julius-tomb-pen-and-brown-ink-drawings/2QHZvTa052ZEzQ?hl=en)

“Rome, 1518.”

Barbara bites her lip. “Miiicheeelangelo?”

“Yes! You know your Masters!”

“These can’t be–”

“Originals? Heavens, no! Copies, as close as I could get them.”

Barbara grins and shakes her head, turning to the rest of the collection.

“I can’t believe—I just can’t believe it! All the history you’ve seen…” Her eyes darken and she frowns, reeling in what she’d earlier caught and let swim, now pulling it firmly up where she can see it. “Walt…so much history. Not all of it— I mean, how much of it…?”

“Was bad?” he finishes, and a cumulus mass, of a darker, lightning-lit kind passes quickly over his own face, before he brushes it away and smiles at her, sad, but not too sad, charming and full of comfort. “It’s history,” he says, gathering up the sketches and folding them back in their sleeve. “Not _ancient_ history, mind you,” he laughs, “but a turn of the wheel as wonderful and horrible as any century.”

He puts back the art book and returns his journal to the shelf. Barbara follows, still holding onto her catch. (The longer she looked, the uglier it grew, captivating and terrible; trying to look away, its image morphed in her mind, twisted and bloated to something she felt was realistic, and feared hardly approached reality.)

She plants her feet behind him, curling her fingers into twitchy fists at her side. He starts at her closeness when he turns around, frowning when she opens her mouth as though to speak, then closes it, and again, like she has been reeled in on a hook and cannot get the words out to demand release.

“Barbara,” he says, touching her arms, rubbing tentative lines over her scrubs with his thumbs. “Darling, what’s wrong?”

She bites her lip, wrapping her arms around herself ‘til she can touch his hands with her own. Meeting his eyes, her thoughts flood against her closed lips and threaten to seep into the air between them.

_How long have you had nightmares? How often do you not sleep? How many wars have you had to fight in? How many battles? How many injuries? Are you ok? Please, promise me you’d tell me if you were ever not ok._

“Promise to…read them to me sometime?” she asks. Walter smiles, sad, but not too sad, takes her hands and squeezes them.

_Nomura, tiny Nomura, in a tattered, pink kimono, holds onto him for dear life and begs him not to go. “Let the big ones fight! Don’t leave, big brother!”_

_Blinkous, waving a scrap of destroyed training dummy, blocks the portcullis and refuses to move. “Walder, you must speak to someone! If not me, perhaps Vendel. Draal! Nomura! Anyone!”_

“Someday, darling. Perhaps someday.”

Barbara’s line jerks, snaps, and something large uncoils and draws a wake across the water. She blinks, and lets Walter lead her back to their table. He picks up the amulet and shines it on a page.

“Now, back to the care of troll versus humankind.”

“I thought we were talking about changelings?”

“We were, yes, but the text keeps them separate.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS one required research, and boy, do I love historical research! The British Museum's online archives are a treasure trove. Walt, on the other hand, is a wreck held together by Duty and Sheer Will. :/

**Author's Note:**

> This was fun to write. Barb and Walt strike such chords with me because their relationship, by sheer, circumstantial necessity, is based on trust. Intimacy for them requires openness and comfort that is a joy to watch. Like youtube videos with Sarah McLaughlin music about animals finding their forever homes—that kind of heartstring-tugging joy. Yanno? Yeah. Yeah, I think ya do.


End file.
